Oblivion Episode 9 - The Swan Song of the Melodious Nocturne
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: This story is inspired by Organization XIII. Great liberties have been taken with names, places, etc. in order to create as original a story as possible. The next phase of Ansem's plan will wreak havoc with the Lethal Tomatoes' school performance. At the same time, Braig makes a plot of his own in hopes of canceling the apocalypse. AU, with some OC's, moderate violence.
1. Chapter 1

AN: As always, please remember to read the first eight episodes of _Oblivion_ before beginning this one.

Can't believe I've been working on this for over a year...and now this installment will be the one that really changes everything at last. The Wham Episode, if you'll pardon my TVTropes jargon.

R&R and enjoy!

Episode 9 - The Swan Song of the Melodious Nocturne

Chapter 1

Thursday, November 1, 8am. The Lethal Tomatoes left their instruments in the gym so they wouldn't have to carry them around all day. The assembly and concert celebrating the re-opening of the school wasn't scheduled till lunchtime, which just for that day would be extended to 45 minutes instead of the usual half-hour. Until then, it was mostly business as usual.

The band piled their instruments on the small raised platform that had been placed at the far end of the gym, while two silver-haired janitors (neither of which were Saix, since Saix was the night guy) helped arrange the speaker system and, for whatever reason, a fog machine.

"Didn't know we were that famous already," Tim said. "A fog machine. Isn't that a bit too over-the-top for this stage in our careers?"

"Nothing's too over-the-top, Timmy," said Ashley. "You should have seen the time we played the Pyramids. Half the crowd was blinded by our lasers, the other half deafened by our speakers."

"Did they go up to twelve?" Tim cracked.

Bobby raised his eyebrow and winked. "Thirteen."

The Tomatoes started to laugh uproariously as they left the room. They remained unaware that as they left, there was only one janitor in the room instead of two, the first having just vanished from existence, and the second having just finished plugging a second fog machine on the other side of the room. Once he was done, he pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and pressed the call button six times. Six squawks to signal that his first part of the mission was a success.

He waited a moment before receiving a single squawk in reply. "Thank you, Superior," Enzo Lessico muttered under his breath, even though he was all alone and nobody could see or hear him. He left the gym, got into his car, peeled off his zip-up janitor's uniform, and drove away, heading in entirely the wrong direction at first. Ansem's orders, because it just wouldn't do for people to follow him back to the townhouse with any kind of eyes, electronic or otherwise. _The paranoia on that guy_, Enzo thought to himself as he drove. _It's so annoying, what he makes me do for him sometimes._

* * *

Meanwhile, in the underground lab beneath the townhouse, Braig Bidos slipped into the break room and took a cup of coffee from the rack. Except this was not his cup. Someone else had just used it and left their own prints on it.

All he had to do was wait, and not for long. Within minutes, his contact entered the break room and held out his hand. Braig placed the used coffee cup - which was now sealed in a plastic bag - and a small test tube full of faintly bubbling clear liquid into his contact's hand, and the contact immediately placed these objects in turn in the pocket of his lab coat.

"He thinks he can see everything coming," the contact said, rolling his eyes. "Nobody's that perfect."

"This'll futz with his plans and leave them beyond repair," said Braig. "I've checked and double-checked. He only has one more chance, otherwise he'll have to wait, what, six hundred thousand years?"

"Six hundred and forty," said the contact. "But I get your point."

Braig nodded. "I just hope when all is said and done, we can save him. The real Ansem-"

"-might well have become just as power-hungry as the one we know today, given time." The contact shook his head. "I know he was your best friend, Braig, but...the guy's a big corporate giant. Face it, it was gonna happen sooner or later."

"I don't wanna use Ansem's catchphrase," Braig said, "but this is actually a great moment for it."

The contact chuckled. "Funny. Now I gotta get outta here. I'm not supposed to be here, remember? If it's a success, I'll come and collect you, and then the kids."

Braig nodded again. "Good luck, Alexis."

Alexis Terra winked. "Not that I need it."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"So is Mac still planning to join us on stage today or what?" Tim asked as he and Tara walked towards their second-period class. "I feel a bit sorry for the guy. I mean, we did promise him a chance to sing some Muse, no?"

Tara smiled. "Yeah, but he says he's gonna be fashionably late."

"Yeah, if by 'fashionably late' you mean 'stuck in traffic coming over the bridge from San Castiel,'" Bobby said, laughing as he joined up with them.

"Laugh it up, fuzzball," said Tara, grabbing Bobby's head and ruffling his hair. "Mac's never missed out on us yet."

"What about the time when we went to Less-"

"Oh, God," Tara groaned. "You seriously count that? The one day Mac didn't show up on time was when he was lucky enough to have done so."

"I can see why you like him," said Tim. "Clearly it ain't his winning personality. Or his great taste in music."

"Or his awesome hair!" called Bobby as he kept going up the hallway while Tara and Tim entered their class together.

* * *

8:59am. Alexis was en route to Santa Marina and, as was usual for this time of day, the freeways were an absolute bottleneck. The fact that he had a very sensitive task to complete was not helping his nerves. To try and settle them, he tuned the radio to Alice, only for that horrific Maroon 5 song to come blasting from his speakers. Alexis nearly crashed his car trying to change the station back to KFOG.

When the traffic came to a virtually-complete standstill once again, Alexis removed the vial from his pocket and examined it. What he wouldn't have given to smash it open and release it here, just to vent his frustrations...but not only would he kill a vast number of people in their cars, he would kill himself as well. Which Braig had highly recommended he not do.

Alexis pocketed the vial again and knocked his head against the steering wheel, muttering a litany of curses through gritted teeth. In his frustration, he almost forgot that he was taking a different route today, and only at the last second did he finally start making his way out of the carpool lane towards the exit he wanted. As it was, he ended up missing the exit anyway, and was forced to take the next one and double back. Luckily, the traffic flow northbound was much less problematic, and he had no problem getting back on track.

* * *

10:32am. Ansem may have predicted any number of potential contingencies that would affect his plans, but even this one he could not possibly have seen coming. As it was, it didn't substantially derail anything, but it was still a nuisance nonetheless.

Waiting for fourth-period gym class to start, a boy called Patrick Jimenez stole over to one of the fog machines that had been set up in preparation for the Lethal Tomatoes' lunchtime concert, and popped open the back panel to see the small tubes of fog juice kept inside it. He had seen a number of fog machines at a number of parties and concerts in his time, but never anything like this. He was fascinated by the oddly shifting rainbow of colors inside the tube.

Patrick touched the tube and, because it was made from some kind of hastily-cobbled-together spare parts, it burst and started releasing pearlescent fog juice. Hurriedly closing the panel to hide the evidence, Patrick ducked away from the machine as if nothing had happened, but then out of the corner of his eye he saw something very strange indeed. A naked woman, who reminded him strongly of some big porn star, was standing in the doorway at the far end of the gym. She beckoned him forward and he followed her.

Ten minutes later, after his gym teacher had noted his absence, the one teacher who was currently on break realized there were strange noises coming from the showers, and upon investigating, found Patrick standing under the stream, still in his gym clothes, but playing with himself quite vigorously.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

11:45am. The Lethal Tomatoes entered the gym and started tuning up their instruments, waiting for the rest of their schoolmates to slowly filter in. Obviously, not everyone was expected to show up, but the gym was so small, having been built in the seventies when the population was considerably smaller, that it was still looking to be standing room only, just like any other assembly. Ashley's little sister stood outside one door, and Tara's little brother stood outside the other, both of them handing out programs to everyone coming in. It was a single piece of paper with six songs listed on it, freshly altered after the change of plans the previous night.

**LETHAL TOMATOES LIVE!  
November 1, 2012  
Ojo de Cielo High Gym, High Noon**

**Setlist:**

**"All Fall Down," OneRepublic  
"Time is Running Out," Muse  
"What You Don't Know," Jonatha Brooke  
"Land of Confusion," Genesis  
"Far Cry," Rush  
"Madness," Muse**

"I just hope Mac makes it on time after all," Tara said as she changed her keyboard so it would play cello sounds for the first song.

"No reason why he wouldn't, right?" Tim asked. Inside, he was still a bit worried about the last song on the list. He wasn't sure if he could keep his concentration going long enough to ensure his guitar wouldn't change on him.

Ashley smiled as she ran through a couple of drum riffs. "None at all. If he does, well, feel free to strangle him, okay?"

"I might just be the first to do it," Tara joked.

* * *

NCT Factory, Santa Marina, 11:58am. Alexis Terra pulled the keycard Braig had lent him out of his pocket and used it to get into the building, which was otherwise off-limits to him. All he had to do was pull the vial out of the plastic bag in which it was (hopefully) still sealed and drop it down the nearest air vent.

Surprisingly, it took him a while to find one. _This is a big factory and they don't ventilate the place?_ Alexis thought. _Wow, when they investigate this thing, people are going to really get in trouble. Sorry, _Superior._ Didn't mean to get you slapped with a lawsuit!_

Finally, a suitable air vent was found. Was the bag still sealed? Thankfully, it was. Alexis gingerly opened it up and removed the vial, then carefully slotted it through the thin gap between louvers on the entrance to the vent. He pushed it along, and listened for a moment before the sound of the glass bumping against the metal suddenly died away. That meant it had fallen down a vertical shaft and was soon going to burst on impact with the bottom.

With only a small amount of time to spare, Alexis raced out the door and back to his car, then pulled out his phone, a Nokia Windows Phone that, for some reason, Ansem had discovered he was unable to track with his own technology. He dialed home and spoke one word: "Foundry." Then he hung up, gunned the ignition on his car, and took off to return to Blancoville as quickly as possible.

He didn't even spare a glance in the rearview mirror to see the white cloud pouring out of the back windows of the factory. The wailing of the evacuation siren was proof that his part of Braig's convoluted little scheme had worked.

* * *

12:02pm. The vice principal glanced down again at young Patrick Jimenez, who had changed back into his street clothes after his "Wet 'n Wild" moment. She thought she'd been given cases of abuse of just about every drug in the book, but this...this was something else. Whatever cocktail Patrick had indulged in, it seemed to have a little bit of everything. Hallucinations, the munchies, hyperactivity, the works.

"Mr. Jimenez, please," the vice principal said. "I need to know, what did you do before you, erm, hit the showers?"

Patrick giggled. "Your face is all blue?" he said questioningly. "Don't you need to breathe, lady?"

"Before the showers, Mr. Jimenez," repeated the vice principal.

Patrick scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I don't really remember," he said in that slow, slurry voice of someone who's had too many drinks. "I think I was looking at the concert stage or something. You know they have a fog machine? It's a really cool fog machine. I bet it makes the best fog you've ever seen!"

"Fog machine?" The vice principal was mystified. "I don't remember anyone saying they'd ordered a fog machine for today." She returned to her desk to make a call to her superior and double-check the preparations for today's little lunchtime show.

* * *

At the same time, the concert was finally ready to start. "You know," Tim said to the audience, "I honestly have no idea why I like this band. They're not rock, they're not quite pop, they get way too much radio airplay...but for some reason I can't get enough. Especially of this song."

"Hope you guys don't think it's too much, too soon!" Bobby said, laughing as he started replicating the song's opening riff, which was normally acoustic but today wouldn't be.

Tim waited until Tara had finished playing the first few measures on the keyboard before launching into the words of Ryan Tedder. "_Step out the door and it feels like rain,_" he sang, watching as the fog machine on one side of the gym started to come on. _"That's the sound, that's the sound on your windowpane..._"


End file.
